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THE AGGREGATE OF PROFESSED FIRMCULTURE ELEMENTS
Kiril Dimitrov
To cite this version:Kiril Dimitrov. THE AGGREGATE OF PROFESSED FIRM CULTURE ELEMENTS. VanguardScientiffic Instruments in Management , BASAGA, 2017, 13 (1). �hal-02970276�
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VANGUARD SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS IN MANAGEMENT, vol. 13, no. 1, 2017, ISSN 1314-0582
THE AGGREGATE OF PROFESSED FIRM
CULTURE ELEMENTS
Author: Kiril Dimitrov
Abstract: The current article explores interesting, significant and recently identified
nuances in disclosing the professed firm culture in the virtual realm. Its emphasis is set on
two exotic instruments – organizational mantra and memorandum that senior managers in
business organizations may use to successfully clarify and communicate what is their
business and why they enter it.
Keywords: Strategic management, organizational culture, official culture, professed
culture, corporate culture, firm culture.
JEL: L29, M14, L26.
INTRODUCTION
High quality business dreaming comes to be a strong prerequisite for: (a)
establishment and further development of successful starting companies, and (b)
undertaking deliberate transformations in already existing business organizations. The
management aim of achieving and maintaining high quality levels for the business dreams
may be pursued persistently by means of adequate creation and elaboration of a
semantical network, consisting in specific elements of professed firm culture that should be
unique for each entity. Traditionally, dominating short-termism in strategic planning
processes and their observed indirect relationship with current profit margins in the
companies prevents their senior managers from paying the necessary attention to efficient
and effective covering of the first pace in strategic management. Even the new
generations of managers enter the business field with the inclination of neglecting this
important aspect in their work, before all because of the dominating theories and market
paradigms, lectured at business universities, describing as heroism the fast accumulation
of profit, circumventing enacted economic laws and desires to escape the creation of win-
win situations with certain constituencies, characterized by establishment of long-term
relationships and acceptance of stable responsibilities. This is the reason why this article
aims at disclosing a richer bundle of professed firm culture elements that may be used by
managers to express their ideas about how things should be done in their entities with
regard to dominating attitudes to diverse constituencies and justifying the existence of their
companies.
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1. A starting point of analyzing professed culture in business
organizations
Traditionally the elements of official firm culture may be presented as a negligible
part of the topics included in some modules that are not always presented in all curricullla
for different specialties in the field of Business and economics, i.e. Introduction to
management, Economics of the enterprise, Business management, Cross-cultural
management (Organization/ Firm culture), Strategic management (Corporate/ Business
strategy), Entrepreneurship and sometimes Marketing and advertising. Furtermore
students’ encounters with this first stage of strategic management, provided by the
respective lecturers, most times are restricted to:
Disclosing theory in a succinct way by providing a single way (or at most uncritical
skimming through several ways) of formulating traditional company documents,
such as a mission statement, a vision and rarely a credo;
Supplying the students with appropriate experiences as independently composing
individual or team course works, elaborating business plans for the creation of new
companies and developing practice-oriented small projects, intended to improve the
performance of existing organizations.
Тhus, strategic short-sightedness is engrained in the professional programming of
students through the content transmition in the educational process, overemphasizing the
limited short-term oriented functional approach to business, dominated by fads as
marketing, innovations, project working and startups. Instead, a more careful and proactive
approach to exerting the first pace in strategic management during key marker events as
the establishment of a new company or leading a change initiative in an existing entity, is
needed.
2. The use of concrete company documents as professed culture
expressive means
The results from a performed scientific project allowed to identify an array of fifteen
elements of professed culture (Dimitrov, Ivanov, Geshkov, 2015; Dimitrov, Ivanov,
Geshkov 2016; Dimitrov, Ivanov, Geshkov 2017) (see figure 1) that may be categorized in
two groups:
The first one, comprising potential firm documents, identifiable as (sub-)topics,
independent, dependent or mediating variables, empirical results and
recommendations in deliberately searched and analyzed scientific articles,
dissertations, books (book chapters), dissertations and blogs of prominent
professionals from selected electronic, academic databases or provided in the
University library, i.e. a declaration of company mission, an organizational vsion, a
credo, a motto, a manifesto, corporate/ firm official philosophy/ policy, firm values,
corporate principles, company purpose and slogan (***, 2018a; ***, 2018b; ***,
2018c; ***, 2018d; ***, 2018e; ***, 2018f).
The second one contains a variety of electronic firm documents that are not widely
dwelled on theoreticlally or the interest to their essence and development is lost in
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time, but all these are accessible on the surveyed companies (sub-)sites that were
identified during the probatory empirical research of a small sample of business
organizations from diverse economic sectors, i.e. firm’s history, general company
related information semantically grouped under the summarizing label of “For us…”,
an official code of conduct or ethical code, “a should-be carefully selected bunch” of
important characterisitics, outlining the official organization culture, intentional
disclosure of company initiatives in the sphere of corporate social responsibility and
sustainability orientation in the performed business activities.
Figure 1. The array of professed firm culture elements, identified in the aforementioned scientific project
That is why it may be concluded that the aggregate of possible elements of
professed firm culture, disclosed in the virtual realm is a complex result both from
theoretical research and managers’ practices in the field of strategic management. Such
an exploration approach brings about thorough identification of target attributes, related to
design and electronic disclosure of professed cultural attributes for companies, operating
in Bulgaria.
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According to a very good definition (Zlatev, 1999), the construct declaration of
company mission represents a specific purpose that: (a) possesses three basic
characterisitcs (social orientation, identity and value orientation); (b) is applied as a means
of declaring firm’s attitude to some constituencies (owners, clients, personnel and local
community); (c) serves as a means of proclaiming management considerations in the
sphere of organizational survival and development; (d) requires analyzes of certain factors
(development tendencies for the respective economic branch, recent company history,
business environment specifics; distinctive competence for the company to use in the
competitive struggle) and (e) may be specified by the use of key adjectives (short, original,
inspriring, orienting and elevated). The mission itself seems to be a complex construct, a
morphing structure and a moving target that becomes evident from diverse approaches to
its design, based on: (a) theories, exploring the reasons for its creation (Bart, Bontis,
Taggar, 2001); (b) probem based theories in elucidation of its essence (Abell, 1980); (c)
theories, determining its components (Want, 1986); (d) theories, forming the attitude to
target constituencies (Pearce, 1982); (e) theories, substituting the delaration of mission
with other related constructs (Mintzberg, Quinn, 1996); (f) theories, formulating a list of
desired characterisitcs (Stone, 1996).
The construct “Company vision” seems to be in the same inconvenient situation as
the previously analyzed one, revealing the lack of consent in relation with its
operationalization. Lynch (2000) defines it as a specific influence that the group of
organizational decision-makers exerts on the existence of the respective firm, based on
dominating view of life and management philosophy. That is why the vision is accepted as
a key prerequisite for performing high quality design of the possible and desired company
state in the future or formulating the firm’s purpose. The enrichment of vision contents in
different directions represents a main stream in the scientific literature, achieved by adding
company values (Hussey, 1998) and professed future (Big hairy audacious goals) (Collins,
Porras, 2002). On the contrary, the desires to limit the nuances in the meaning of vision
and to subordinate it hierarchically to mission (Zlatev, 1999; Campbell, Tawadey, 1992;
Sheaffer, Landau, Drori, 2008) also exist.
The company credo – an effective professed culture element, setting an
organization’s convictions, goals, responsibilities and philosophies, is characterized by
greater consensus around the nuances, embedded in its meaning, because it is more
infrequently applied by business organizations in comparison to mission and vision
(Métayer, 2002; Parker, 2012), and its existence is marked by the overexposure of a
magnificent example, provided by the founder of a great company (***, 2018h).
Nevertheless, some identified differences, related with its lengh (wordcount), still cannot
be missed (Parker, 2012; Vogan, 2006).
Firm’s motto is used to express in a succinct way, by means of a phrase or
sentence that contains a belief or an ideal, how a company describes itself in how they feel
they should do business (***, 2008). It incarnates a belief or ideal and help in motivating
personnel members. It is close to a slogan, but the last one is always related to a certain
organizational campaign, used to attract loyal customers with catchy sentences (***, 2013).
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There is no hesitation in relation with producing a manifesto that is intended to build
and maintain a strong, long-term emotional bond between a target business organization
and its constituencies by means of creating a succinct company identity disclosure,
formulating its dominating beliefs, and justifying the reasons why to pursue a certain
cause, because of the existence of only one main contributor for this element of professed
firm culture (Bell, 2016).
No matter the open discussion on corporate/ firm official philosophy/ policy, there
are several themes that should be included, as follows: the essence of the desired
relashionships among the company and its constituencies, formulated purpose with
respect to growth and profitability, design of key corporate policies in certain spheres
(management style, personnel, finances, marketing and applied technology) and
declaration of basic firm-level values (ethics, beliefs, unwritten rules of behavior) (Paunov,
1995).
The use of firm values and corporate principles in practice seems to be very
bewildering, because an unbiased analyzer remains with the impression that a great deal
of senior managers simpy do not differenciate between the two constructs, i.e. one used
item may be included in both lists. Furthermore, it seems that many managers are not
aware of what is the essence and what are the nuances of meaning, embedded in these
principles and values, since in most of the cases no descriptions are provided to them
(Zlatev, 1999; Dimitrov, Ivanov, Geshkov, 2016; Dimitrov, Ivanov, Geshkov, 2015).
Similar to the aforementioned situation, the company purpose frequently is not
structured in the right format, stimulating people to undertake action in a certain direction
to achieve something (Zlatev, 1999).
The following elements of professed firm culture are not presented theoretically in
scientific books and articles (***, 2018a; ***, 2018b; ***, 2018c; ***, 2018d; ***, 2018e; ***,
2018f). That is why their essence and important characterisitcs are derived from surveying
the structure and content of websites, belonging to 660 companies, operating in Bulgaria
(Dimitrov, Ivanov, Geshkov, 2017; Dimitrov, Ivanov, Geshkov, 2016; Dimitrov, Ivanov,
Geshkov, 2015):
Firm’s history in most cases is represented by a summarized information of several
paragraphs, disclosing key events from organization’s life stages that may be
presented even on an axis and marked by specific time units.
“For us…” represents general company-related information, semantically grouped
under this summarizing label, describing activities, main products and related
services.
An official code of conduct or ethical code, informing the constituencies about
should-be typical behaviors of company’s employee in the process of performing
the needed business-related interaction.
“A should-be carefully selected bunch” of important characteristics, outlining the
official organization culture, i.e. embodying senior management aspirations of how
things should be done in the respective company.
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Deliberate dignified disclosure of undertaken company initiatives in the sphere of
corporate social responsibility and sustainability orientation even without
differentiating between the two spheres.
The results from the conducted empirical survey of the internet sites of companies-
members of several employer organizations in Bulgaria1, reveal that the professed firm
culture is presented most frequently in the internet by means of official company
documents as: “For us… (About us…)” (91,9%), “Mission” (15,9%), “Our (organizational)
history” (14,8%), “Corporate social responsibility, sustainability” (11,9%), “Vision” (8,1%),
“Firm/ our values” (6,2%), “Corporate/ firm/ official philosophy/ policy” (4,2%) and
“Corporate/ firm principles” (3,4%) (see table 1). The sum of the percent data from the
most right column exceeds one hundred, because each surveyed business organization
may apply more than one official firm document for public proclamations of key facets in its
unique company culture. The survey results showed that this option is widely used by the
senior management teams of the explored entities. The existence of a rarely applied firm
document for characterizing a target professed firm culture – a manifesto, is identified
through theoretical research, although it is not applied by surveyed entities. Furthermore, it
is beheld that 45 of the surveyed companies do not disclose professed firm culture
documents on their websites.
Table 1. Frequency distribution of the use of specific company documents for professed culture disclosure
$x_1m Frequencies
1. What are the types of documents used to describe the professed culture of a company in internet?
Responses Percent of Cases
N Percent
Professed culture - documentsa
Vision 50 4,9% 8,1%
Mission 98 9,6% 15,9%
Motto 17 1,7% 2,8%
Credo 6 0,6% 1,0%
Corporate/ firm/ official philosophy/ policy 26 2,6% 4,2%
Firm/ our values 38 3,7% 6,2%
Our history, presented even on an axis, marked by specific time units
91 8,9% 14,8%
For us…(About us…) 565 55,6% 91,9%
Code of conduct, Ethical code 5 0,5% 0,8%
Corporate/ firm principles 21 2,1% 3,4%
Purpose 5 0,5% 0,8%
Firm/ corporate/ organization culture 6 0,6% 1,0%
Corporate social responsibility, sustainability 73 7,2% 11,9%
Slogan 16 1,6% 2,6%
Total 1017 100,0% 165,4%
a. Dichotomy group tabulated at value 1.
1 The surveyed companies belong to local employer organizations as Association of the industrial capital in
Bulgaria, Bulgarian outsourcing association, Bulgarian association of information technologies, Small and medium-sized companies, included in GEPARD annual rating, Bulgarian - Swiss trade chamber, German - Bulgarian industrial trade chamber, Chamber of the Spanish industry and trade in Bulgaria and Bulgarian defense industry association.
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3. Rarely applied elements for disclosing professed firm culture in the
internet
Two exotic elements of professed firm culture, that may be used in the internet by
the companies, are outlined here, i.e. organizational mantra and memorandum (memo).
These items were identified after the completion of the aforementioned scientific project
through extensive research in the British space of Google during an Erasmus+ lecturing
mobility visit in Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham city, United Kingdom Great Britain
and North Ireland, realized by the author (***, 2018g). Different approaches to exploring
the nuances in the meaning of the term “organizational mantra” are applied.
First, the organizational mantra is detected to embody the second step in a top-five
list of the most important things (steps) an entrepreneur is expected to accomplish in a
timely manner in order to achieve initial competitive advantage and retain sustainable
success for a target starting company, generated by Guy Kawasaki – a world renowned
business guru and university lecturer (see Kawasaki, 2004). The analysis, provided here,
is based on the potential relationship between religion and magic, on one hand, and
successful business operation, on the other hand. That is why the Kawasaki (2004)
proposes the following definition for the term mantra: “A sacred verbal formula repeated in
prayer, meditation, or incantation, such as an invocation of a god, a magic spell, or a
syllable or portion of scripture containing mystical potentialities.” Another nuace in its
meaning is reveled by Snow (n.d.) who associates it with words or phrases, deliberately
repeated to facilitate organizational transformation. Yekutiel (2014) adopts a limiting
approach to necessary elucidation of the aforementioned term, even limiting its meaning to
“a word or sound repeated to aid concentration in meditation” (“a few core power words”),
relying on its Sanskrit definition, i.e. “a thought behind a word or action”. Mantras serve
organizations as decision, communication and alignment tools with an emphasis on who
they want to be, and not on what they want to do, thus continuously energizing the
employees with clarity, conviction and passion about the firm (see table 2). So it seems
that repetition, conciseness, simplicity, clarity, conviction, emotionality, sweetness, power,
preciseness, sincerity, memorability, actionability and passion are to be main
characterisitcs for this company document, applied to express important features of a
target professed firm culture (Yekutiel, 2014; Mooney, n.d.).
Table 2. Kawasaki’s top-five list of the most important things an entrepreneur must
accomplish when starting a firm and other elucidations of organizational mantra
Steps Description
(1) (2)
1. Make meaning
1.1. Make the world a better place.
1.2. Increase the quality of life.
1.3. Right a terrible wrong.
1.4. Prevent the end of something good.
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Continued…
(1) (2)
2. Make mantra
1.1. It evokes great power and emotion.
1.2. It should be short, simple, catchy and sweet.
2.3. It communicates an important theme of the starting company’s culture.
2.4. A means, disclosing to the employees what value is to be held sacred in the
company by searching answers to questions: Is it to be open? Does it help solve
a problem? Does it create new ideas? What the company stands for? What is the
common philosophy to bring to life and promote through the venture?
3. Get going
3.1. Think big – set your sights high and strive for something grand.
3.2. Find a few soulmates – the team makes the company work.
3.3. Polarize people by catalising passion – pro & anti, without any offense.
3.4. Design different and not by the rules of the current management fad (4 basic
approaches: i want one; my employer couldn't or wouldn't do it; what the hell - it's
possible, tough times & not proven markets; there must be a better way).
3.5. Use prototypes as market research - a product or service should be revised
only because customers already love it.
4. Define your
business model.
4.1. Who has your money in their pockets? - defining the customer
and the pain that he feels.
4.2. How are you going to get it into your pocket? - creating a sales mechanism to
ensure that company’s revenues exceed the costs.
5. Weave a MAT
(milestones,
assumptions, and
tasks)
5.1. Determine major milestones the starting business has to meet
Examples: Prove your concept; Complete design specifications; Finish a prototype; Raise capital, Ship a testable version to customers; Ship the final version to customers; Achieve breakeven.
5.2. Formulate consciously assumptions to build into the adopted business model
Examples of determining factors for the assumptions: product or service performance metrics, market size, gross margin, sales calls per salesperson, conversion rate of prospects to customers, length of sales cycle, return on investment for the customer, technical support calls per unit shipped, payment cycle for receivables and payables, compensation requirements, prices of parts and supplies.
5.3. Define the tasks that have to be accomplished for the purpose of creating an
organization.
Examples: renting office space, finding key vendors, setting up accounting and payroll systems, filing legal documents, purchasing insurance policies.
Sources: Kawasaki (2004); Yekutiel (2014).
The second approach in outlining the nuances of organizational mantra relies on its
deliberate differentiation in comparison to important related constructs (see table 3). For
example, some authors consider that it is oriented to only a single constituency – the
employees (Kawasaki, 2004) or simultaneously to two constituencies – employees and
customers (Ray, n.d.). Furthermore, it is considered to be derived from the mission, other
strategic planning documents or by employee brainstorming sessions, designed by senior
management in the business organization. That is why organizational mantra may be
classified as a secondary company document, although its great contribution to achieving
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excellent market performance by a target firm cannot be underestimated. Its volume is
measured by Wordcount number according to the rules of “western culture” with a lower
limit of just two words and an upper limit of only one text line (one page line).
Table 3. The relationship between the term “Organizational mantra” and related constructs
Criteria of comparing Organizational mantra Related constructs
(1) (2) (3)
Predominant
orientation to a certain
constituency
The company employees.
Definition: “It's a guideline for
what they do in their jobs”.
Example of Nike's mantra:
"Authentic athletic
performance."
The customers of the company.
Definition: A tag line (a message in company
adverisements) “It's a guideline for how
customers to use the company’s product or
service.
Example of Nike's tag line: "Just do it."
Level of analysis (the
business organization
as a whole vs just the
marketing sphere in
the firm
The organizational level only
Marketing mantra – company’s brand
positioning statement or a core thought,
aligning the brand and business goals, and
related strategic moves in the marketing
sphere.
The length of
professed firm culture
element (Word count)
In business, a mantra
encapsulates or fully describes
a company mission statement
in a succinct and memorable
way (2-5 words or one line
phrase).
A mission statement for the business
organization:
– frequent need of interpreting the embedded
meaning in the paragraphes,
- rarely the employees know it by heart and
recite it when needed
- a length of at least several lines
Differenciating mantra
from slogan
It achieves the same results as
a slogan but also defines your
employees’ roles in the
company.
It is more fundamental to a
company’s internal purpose
Slogan - an advertising or marketing tool
intended to influence the potential customers
to think highly of a target firm, its products and
services, and their usage.
Example:
- Nike’s slogan “Just do it” (customer
orientation)
- Nike’s mantra: “Achieving athletic excellence”
(orientation to both employees and customers)
Differenciating mantra
from company
philosophy
It epitomizes company’s
philosophy.
Company philosophy – relationships with
constituencies, formulated goals in relation to
growth and profitability, firm policy design in
spheres as management style, attitude to
employees, finances, marketing and
technology) and declaration of company
values
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Continued…
(1) (2) (3)
Level of analysis (the
business organization
as a whole vs career
self-management)
The organizational level only
Career mantra – a means of perceiving
yourself as a marketer, product or brand that
allows you multiple summing up your values
whenever a potential change in career path or
direction has to be undertaken. It represents a
set of three steps:
1. Consider Your Values
2. What Problem Can You Solve?
3. Make It Actionable
Differenciating mantra
from motto
It is more fundamental to a
company’s internal purpose
Motto – a content, liable to marketing
exaggeration.
Differenciating mantra
from conventional
wisdom
Dominating unusual beliefs in
business organizations that
contribute to the achievement
of massive results.
Conventional wisdom - often yields
conventional results.
Level of analysis
(the business
organization as a
whole vs the
personality of the
entrepreneur)
The organizational level only
Business mantras of entrepreneurs:
1. Fun should come first. (Barbara Corcoran,
founder of The Corcoran Group and Shark
on US Shark Tank)
2. Be obsessed. (Grant Cardone, founder of a
$500 million realestate empire, NYT
bestselling author of “Be Obsessed or Be
Average”)
3. Train staff to leave your company. (Craig
Handley, co-founder and CEO of ListenTrust)
Sources: Kawasaki (2004); Articulate_ (2018); Johnstad (2016); Ray (n.d.); Paunov (1995); Warchol
(2017); Snow (n.d.); Mason (n.d.); Oracles medium (2016).
The third approach seeks the appropriate object of application for the construct that
varies in the scientific literature between five situations, as follows – a starting company
(Maurer, 2014), a startup (Johnstad, 2016), an existing company with its own business
tracks (Yekutiel, 2014), a mix of two of them (Kawasaki, 2004) or a mix of all of them
(Walter, 2014). Diverse examples of organizational mantra are shown in table 4.
Table 4. Examples of organizational mantra
Companies that adopted this
approach Examples of mantras
(1) (2)
Google Don't be evil
Mary Kay Enriching women’s lives
Federal Express Peace of mind
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Continued…
(1) (2)
Nike Authentic athletic performance
Apple Computer Think different (served simultaneously as a slogan and a
mantra)
Target Democratize design
Disney Fun family entertainment
Starbucks Rewarding everyday moments
IBM Think
Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers Winning is everything
Facebook Mobile first (in 2012)
Move fast with stable infrastructure (recently)
Kaltura Being open, flexible, and collaborative
Contently Be awesome
Huge Make something you love
72ANDSUNNY Be brave and generous
Sprinklr Embrace the suck
Dyson Celebrate naiveté
Oneupweb Be relentless
Nitro PDF No bullshit
Huge Make something you love
Stylecaster Style to the People
Sources: Mason (n.a.); Oracles medium (2016); Kawasaki (2004); Yekutiel (2014); Walter (2014); Snow
(n.d.).
The second exotic element of professed firm culture, i.e. memorandum (memo), is
not created mainly for this purpose, and its application in professed firm culture disclosure
seems to be secondary, although its importance need not be underestimated for at least
two reasons:
The urgent necessity of imporving “culture-strategy” relationship in the company by
mitigating “management-employee” cultural differences, contributing to smouldering
contradictions or emerging sharp conflicts even among more constituencies as in
the case of James Damore’s Google Memo, entitled “Google’s Ideological Echo
Chamber”, expressing his discriminative opinion to gender issues that finally led to
his being fired from the entity, and the timely design and communication to the
employees of another memo as a sensible managerial response to this unpleasant
situation by Google’s new Vice President of Diversity, Integrity & Governance
Danielle Brown (Conger,2017; Romano, 2017; Wiener, 2017).
If the relationship “culture-strategy” is modified to “culture-tactics”, it seems that the
significance of memorandum increases, becomming an evident element of
professed firm culture network in the virtual realm. This offical firm document may
be viewed as an intersection between the dominating culture in the entity and
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strategic management implementation at low levels of organizational structure,
because the format and the soul of the enacted company documents to some
extent specify and even in some cases establish rules for solution of frequently
occurring situations or repetitative issues, arising during the realization of different
projects from the current portfolio of the business organization (Paunov, 2005). The
memorandum may be applied to disperse written information about a great deal of
business situations as needed organizational policy changes, personnel changes,
project status update and recommendations for increasing the performance,
requested employee meeting attendance, pending changes to work procedures or
practices, etc. (Heaps, 2018; ***, n.d.) In a case the memo outlives the current
situation, because it brings about the achievement of success and there is a shared
perception of this success, than it gradually becomes perceived by the consitiencies
as the right way to think, feel and act in relation with similar issues (Schein, 2004).
The analysis of memorandums has at least five aspects: (a) determining the format
of the document (M Libraries Publishing, n.d.; WebGURU, n.d.), (b) steps that have to be
followed in composing this firm document (WikiHow, n.d.; Laux, 2017), (c) disclosing its
main characterisitcs (M Libraries Publishing, n.d.; WebGURU, n.d.), (d) length of the
document (more frequently up to one page and in rare cases up to ten pages) (Romano,
2017; WebGURU, n.d.) and (e) recommendations or strategies to achieve higher results
from its use (***, 2018i; ***, 2018j).
Conclusion
This survey revealed the enriched spectrum of professed firm culture elements (see
figure 2) that may be used by senior managers in contemporary business organizations,
built to last, pursuing rigorously a sustainable competitive advantage and demonstrating
flexibility and resilence under the unpredictable influences of the contemporary turbulent
business environment. The already presented analysis of key, recent scientific and
business-related publications from selected electronic academic databases and the
internet permits expressing several considerations regarding the realizations and wise use
by senior managers of professed firm culture elements:
Still it is not clear how many elements of professed firm culture should be used
simultaneously by one entity in order to achieve success.
Overlapping in the nuances of meaning and contradicting assumptions of the
established hierarchy among the researched constructs are still observed.
The advantages and disadvantages of all the elements of professed firm culture are
still not proven by greater number of entities from different regions of the world,
sectors of the economy, or big, small or edium-sized companies.
The potential effects of cultural differences at national and branch levels on the use
of the professed firm culture elements in the enriched bundle are not identified.
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Figure. 2 The enriched bundle of professed culture elements.
The emerging ways of transferring company information electronically, including in
the sphere of professed culture, also contribute to complication of future research
initiatives and activities.
The innovations of website design may also be determined as an important factor,
influencing the perceiving of company-related information by different
constituencies on the internet.
Important changes in teaching curricula should be undertaken to reveal this
diversity of approaches to constructing the professed culture of a company, i.e. to
express publicly one’s own business dreams.
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Information about the author
associate professor Kiril Dimitrov, Ph.D., “Industrial business” department,
University of National and World Economy (UNWE) – Sofia, Bulgaria, e-mail:
[email protected] .